Floating Island: A Day Without Pain

Richard, my sweetie, and I spent the weekend visiting old friends we haven't seen for over a year. They moved to a new home that has its own name carved on a stone post by the driveway and a pond with a floating island. They're not rich folks. The house was a mess when they bought it. In fact the first rain storm that hit after they moved in cascaded like a waterfall through the roof onto the dining room floor. They worked very hard for two years to uncover, discover, and recover the beauty they saw beneath the mildew and grime in their new home.

During our visit, I had a moment. Richard and I were sitting in a couple of deck chairs by the pond. The early morning New England sunlight glanced off the swirl of fierce red, yellow, and brown autumn leaves, as the wind blew them onto the silent water. I was acutely aware of being here, in this cocoon of beauty, without pain. Without pain was, for a moment, as powerful a sensation as pain had been. To be so sweetly aware of the absence of my enemy, to praise my body for being bigger than pain, to take Richard's hand and know that he was thinking the same thing.......this was a moment.

Our friends will have years of joy in their new home. But my joy, in that one moment, was a life time.